


the sun a souvenir

by deletable_bird



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: (thats a tag wtf), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, Art, Crush at First Sight, Dan Howell Is Not A Youtuber, First Meetings, M/M, Neither Is Phil Lester, Secret Crush, Sexual Content, Starbucks, Strangers to Lovers, dan is a sleep-deprived painter, phil is pretty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-29 07:04:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10848915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deletable_bird/pseuds/deletable_bird
Summary: It took Dan a record-breaking eleven times of being in the same physical space as his current crush before he managed to speak a word to him.Fluff/humor/smut, 10.8k





	the sun a souvenir

**Author's Note:**

> **This story includes visual aids. It is highly recommended but not required to read on something OTHER than a mobile phone (or something else with a similarly small screen) for the full desired effect.**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> And a month and one day late, here's the birthday present for [Laney](https://twitter.com/oftenoverlaps) à la 2017. Happy happy (late late) birthday to you, Miss FFXV Trash. You get a phanfic regardless.
> 
> Huge thank you to [Nikki](https://twitter.com/noogaloo) for creating art to go along with the fic and [NothingSoDivine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NothingSoDivine/pseuds/NothingSoDivine) for beta'ing <3 Y'all are the best.
> 
> Title from [Bridge Burn](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YOWXfJIEYk) by Little Comets. (remember that playlist, Laney? we'll get that done one day)
> 
>  
> 
> [disclaimer](http://deletablebird.tumblr.com/d)

It took Dan a record-breaking eleven times of being in the same physical space as his current crush before he managed to speak a word to him.

Dan had an unshakable past of crushing on either the strangest or most unattainable people around. His list of past infatuations included but was not limited to the singular goth girl in his entire school during the first half of ninth grade, the fastest boy on his high school’s track team during his last year before he graduated, and a bafflingly magnetic agender sex worker he’d found on Tumblr during his gap year. The unfairly pretty man who kept showing up at the Starbucks closest to Dan’s dorm building was a surprisingly normal addition to the list.

He was usually there a few minutes before Pretty Starbucks Man, but today, he found himself face to face with an angel the moment he stepped inside. He actually found himself face to back with an angel, as Pretty Starbucks Man was waiting in line and had his face turned towards the counter, but reality after all was subjective and figures of speech could be universally applicable if he wanted them to be, goddammit.

He slipped into line behind Pretty Starbucks Man and flipped the hood of his coat back off of his head, hoping to god that he could pass off the heat in his face as a simple biological response to entering a warm, steamy environment after the bitter cold that lay between Dan’s dorm building and his morning caffeine fix. He’d had enough crushes in the past to know they were at their most crippling when sheer proximity to his object of infatuation made him blush.

The line, never large to begin with, disappeared quickly as lines tend to do at 7am on Tuesday mornings. Once he’d reached the counter Dan gave the barista a faint smile and his usual order, tacking on a ‘please’ when Pretty Starbucks Man, standing a mere five feet away, ever so politely reiterated his presence with a gentle sigh and a shifting of his weight from one foot to the other.

Dan cleared his throat and settled himself just outside Pretty Starbucks Man’s space bubble, hands buried deep in his pockets. He had a lecture exam in cellular biology at 8:00am, and the way the warm lights behind the counter outlined Mister Pretty’s aquiline profile were a more than welcome distraction from his impending doom. Pretty had a pair of glasses perched on the bridge of his nose today, frames thick and black, and although Dan could only really see them out of the corner of his eye, he could tell at the very least that they made him look scholarly, and just that much more swoon-worthy.

“Venti espresso,” called the barista, interrupting Dan’s internal monologue and holding up two identical drinks at the opposite end of the counter, “and, um, venti espresso.”

Dan started towards his drink, trying to shake off his swoon-y thoughts. Half a second later, he realised that shaking them off would be absolutely no use, as Pretty Starbucks Man was matching him stride-for-stride in the same direction.

They met at the pick-up counter and, in the few scarce moments during which they both reached out for a coffee, actually reached for the same cup. Every cliché romcom meet-cute scenario silently imploded in Dan’s head in favor of the sparks that shot down his spine when their pinkies brushed together.

“Ha, sorry,” said Pretty, looking up and meeting Dan’s eyes and oh, dear. He was really rather nice looking with glasses on.

“N,” said Dan eloquently. He cleared his throat and tried again. “No problem.” A weak smile fluttered around the edges of his mouth. His face was one hundred percent on fire.

Pretty’s eyes flicked from Dan’s face down to both of their hands, still resting millimetres apart on the pick-up counter, and lingered there. “I like that,” he said, gesturing with his chin down at Dan’s hand, which Dan hurriedly glanced down at as well. For all he knew, it could have been his bone structure that Pretty had deemed deserving of a comment, but further inspection left him almost sure it was the multi-coloured flecks of paint from last night, scattered across his knuckles, that had caught Pretty’s attention.

“What, these?” asked Dan, a solid two seconds too late, lifting his hand up off of the counter and leaving it suspended awkwardly in the space between them.

Pretty nodded, smiling. “Do you paint?” he asked, looking fleetingly down at the counter to actually pick up a coffee. Somehow he managed to sip it and maintain eye contact simultaneously. Dan’s stomach swooped.

“Yes,” he replied, “just a bit.” This was, in fact, the understatement of the year; he’d been up until all hours last night painting, knowing perfectly well that he had an exam at 8 in the morning the next day, plus a five-hour shift at ASDA immediately after classes, and still somehow managed to talk his post-midnight, pre-6am brain into the idea of two hours of sleep being a brilliant idea.

“How much is a bit?” Pretty asked, raising his eyebrows. There was a mix of skepticism and amusement in his voice. Dan had never been more uncertain of how to proceed, but proceed he did.

“A bit more than a bit,” he said, then added an exasperated “Holy redundancy, Batman,” and was utterly taken aback when those three little words got Pretty to laugh. It was a real laugh too, shoulders scrunching up and the hand that wasn’t occupied by a coffee coming up to cover his smile, and Dan’s respiratory system went into sudden and violent arrest.

“I think you just summed up all the Batman movies in three words,” said Pretty, just a little breathless with laughter, and Dan had to take a moment.

He was about to reply when a vaguely annoyed-looking girl peered at him from around Pretty’s shoulder and raised her eyebrows. “Sorry, can I get through here? My drink’s ready,” she asked, coldly polite. Dan cleared his throat and nodded, embarrassed, picking up the neglected espresso remaining on the counter.

The two of them stepped away from the bar simultaneously to let the girl push through, and Pretty gave Dan an apologetic smile. “I’ve got to run,” he said, “pre-semester me decided an eight AM class was a good idea.”

“That’s the devil speaking through you right there,” replied Dan, returning the smile with surprising ease. He hadn’t stuttered once during his last sentence, too. Baby steps.

“Truly,” Pretty said, smile going from apologetic to genuinely amused. He tugged his coat closer around him and took a half-step back, towards the door. “See you around?”

“Definitely,” Dan said, waving just a second too late as Pretty turned and made his brisk, business-like way out of the door. The second the latch clicked back into place Dan realised just how fast his heart was beating, and he pressed his free hand to his chest, breathless.

He needed a lie-down and someone to help him dissect everything that had just been said after what might have been the most emotionally taxing five-minute conversation of his life, but he settled for a sip of his coffee instead. The building was filling up around him as the minutes ticked by, and Dan’s stomach jolted unpleasantly as his eyes landed on the analog clock perched beside the menu behind the bar - he had five minutes to make the fifteen-odd minute walk from Starbucks to his first class.

This was, in fact, physically impossible, but Dan blustered in at 8:07 regardless and had done nothing but set his coffee down on his usual desk when something caught his eye. Scrawled in black marker on the side of his now-lukewarm espresso was a name that was definitely not his.

 _Phil_ , it said, inconspicuously and in messy handwriting. There was a gap between the h and the i and it was very clearly written with a great deal of haste, and on the awkwardly curved side of a coffee cup, but it said Phil nonetheless and Dan kept his eyes fixed on it as he set his backpack down and slid into his seat.

 _Phil_ , he thought, and rather inconveniently found himself unable to stop thinking for the next three hours.

* * *

“I think I shall just die,” announced Dan by way of greeting, foregoing the notion of sitting down in favor of flopping backwards over two chairs and landing with his head in Louise’s lap. “Right here, right now. Deceased. Immediately.”

“Is this about Mister Starbucks Man?” asked Louise, not even bothering to look away from her coursework. Dan scrunched his nose up at her.

“His name’s Phil,” he replied, and got an incredulous look in return.

“When did you find _that_ out, then?” squeaked Louise, shutting her laptop with a snap and leaning back. Dan sat up and swung his legs over so he was sitting more like a regular human in the library chair beside her, knees pressed against the cushions on the inside of the arm. Just remembering what had happened earlier made his chest flutter.

“This morning, when I was half-asleep and we accidentally traded coffees,” said Dan, burying his face in both hands to hide the giant smile that decided to take over his face as soon as he’d gotten his words out. Louise let out a soft, subdued kind of scream in response, fingers wrapping around one of his wrists and tugging gently but repeatedly.

“I know,” Dan burst out, looking up at her. “Me too.”

Louise didn’t stop tugging on his arm. “Dan . . . !” she said, like it was the beginning of sentence that she had no intention of finishing.

“Louise, I _know_ ,” Dan told her, on the verge of laughter now. “I was _there_. It happened to _me_.”

“You can’t die NOW,” said Louise, her tone the verbal equivalent of flinging her arms up in the air - a mixture of exasperation and happiness. “You have to ask him _out_ first.”

“Oh fuck,” said Dan right back, falling back against the opposite arm of his chair as Louise’s words sank in. He’d been thinking something along their lines for the past three hours, of course, but he’d been skirting around really saying it to himself, and something about the way they sounded outside of his head drove the message home to a point that was more ‘well fuck’ than giddy happiness.

“Don’t you dare chicken out of this,” said Louise, the grip she still had on his wrist yanking his arm out into the space between them. “You have spoken to me about naught but Mister Pretty Starbucks Man for the past week and a half, you’re not allowed to just _stop_.”

She waved his hand around a bit to emphasize her point. Dan scrunched his nose at her. “That’s a lie and you know it,” he said, although she was more right than wrong. “We talk about everything under the sun.”

“Yes,” said Louise patiently, “and Mister Pretty is everything under the sun for you right now.”

“Actually fuck off,” said Dan vehemently, sitting up suddenly to shove his hand in her face. She squawked and broke into peals of laughter, flinching away and covering her face with both her arms, and Dan shifted onto his knees, already giggling, so he could wave both hands around in her personal space.

Mister Phil the Pretty Starbucks Man and all the emotions and blushing he brought with him could wait. Sitting in the library and annoying Louise to the point of laughter was more important right now.

* * *

Thursday morning, 7am found Dan Howell in Starbucks with a sleepless night behind him, wearing an outfit almost completely ruined by blue and white paint. He didn’t actually have any class until 9, but it was late enough in the morning that if he fell asleep he wouldn’t wake until 4pm at least, and he knew himself well enough to be sure that at least two extremely potent caffeinated drinks would be required for him to make it through the day.

Of course, the universe seemed insistent on all of Dan’s current early visits to Starbucks going one way and one way only, and that way seemed to be including run-in with Phil the Pretty Starbucks Man that left Dan bright red in the face. Today was no different.

Phil was already waiting in line when Dan pushed open the door, and Dan’s stomach dropped. He was at his least composed right now, the exact opposite of the way he’d like to appear in front Pretty Phil from Starbucks, and he honestly would have about-faced and salvaged an instant coffee packet from the dingy dorm building’s kitchen if the bell above the door hadn’t tinkled and made Phil glance around to see who’d come in.

His eyes landed on Dan, standing there already blushing with blue and white handprints smeared all over his jeans and sweatshirt, and miraculously smiled. “Hi there,” he said, his voice impossibly casual and friendly, one corner of his mouth hitched up just a bit higher than the other in a subtle, lopsided kind of smile. “Rough night?”

“Yeah, a little,” Dan choked out, and made his weak-kneed way over to the end of the line, right behind Phil. Phil, the fucking nice person that he was, turned bodily around, and Dan could see clear as day that he had every intention of starting a conversation. This realization quite unnecessarily made Dan’s heart skip a beat or three.

“I like this colour scheme,” said Phil, gesturing vaguely to Dan’s entire body. Dan’s gaze followed the motion of his hand automatically, and he ended up looking down at himself and vehemently reconsidering his decision to come out in public before 9am.

“Ah yes,” said Dan, tone of voice a little bit too tired to be considered sheepish. “I was employing my signature technique.”

“What’s that, then?” asked Phil.

“Overwhelming and uncontrolled,” replied Dan, and Phil had to physically look away because he was laughing so hard. Dan’s stomach swooped, and a smile started tugging at the corners of his mouth without him saying it was even remotely allowed to.

“Are you always so witty, or is it just because we always run into each other practically before the sun’s risen?” asked Phil, after glancing over his shoulder and moving backwards a bit to keep up with the line.

Dan’s heart skipped a beat.

“Definitely because of the timing,” he said, slipping his hands into his sweatshirt pockets and meandering a couple steps closer as he trailed along behind the line. Phil smiled at him, a softer smile than the one he had when he was laughing.

“We should start coordinating our Starbucks trips,” he said. Dan made eye contact with him and abruptly couldn’t look away. “I can always use some sleep-deprived humour as a morning pick-me-up.”

“My sleep schedule is so fucked, you can catch me any time of day and I’ll have some sleep-deprived humour for you,” said Dan.

Phil giggled. “Aren’t we all at this point?”

“Next,” the barista interrupted, and Phil gave Dan an apologetic kind of look before turning around and placing his order. Dan’s eyes, without him telling them to, trained on Phil’s hands - pretty hands - as he unfolded his wallet and pulled out a tenner.

It took him a solid six seconds of watching before it hit him that he’d completely forgot to bring his wallet. His stomach lurched unpleasantly, and he pulled his hands out of his sweatshirt to pat his jeans down, just in case.

He was wallet-free. The unpleasant rush that always came with realizing he’d forgotten something was fading, and he stepped off to the side, offering the guy behind him an apologetic smile. “I forgot my wallet,” he explained.

Phil, halfway to the pick-up counter, turned around with eyebrows raised. “Forgot your wallet?” he echoed, and Dan nodded.

“I haven’t slept, it’s only to be expected,” he replied, shrugging and smiling a little. Phil rocked his weight back onto one foot, giving Dan a pensive look. 

“I’ll pay,” he said after a moment, and the _shit-I-forgot-something_ feeling that Dan had only just gotten rid of was replaced all at once with a (mostly incoherent) mixture of _holy shit_ and _I can’t let him_.

“It’s okay,” insisted Dan, taking another step away from the line. He glanced back over his shoulder briefly, and caught both the barista and the guy who had been waiting behind him watching his and Phil’s exchange like it was a tennis match and they were die-hard tennis fans.

“No, really,” Phil shot back, stepping closer and holding out a couple of notes and some change. “My change is just enough for something small.”

Dan looked from the money to the menu - Phil was right about the size - back to the money, and then up to Phil’s face. He had his eyebrows up again, expectant. He wasn’t going to let Dan get away without accepting his chivalry.

“You’re lucky I’m too tired to be stubborn,” Dan sighed, reaching out and taking the money. Phil’s expression broke into a grin, and he did a ridiculous little victory fist-pump, looking entirely too accomplished for someone who had just paid for a sleep-deprived art student’s morning caffeine fix.

“Short white chocolate mocha,” said Dan to the barista, sliding Phil’s money across the counter, before turning to Phil himself and saying, “Next time we see each other, I’ll be way too well-rested to ever accept your aggressive niceness.”

“Looking forward to it,” Phil grinned at him, saluting with his free hand as he took his drink from the counter and started towards the door.

Dan lifted one hand in a helpless kind of wave as the door swung shut behind Phil, the bell above it ringing him out. Dan felt a little floaty, like he’d been dreaming and had just now woken up but was still a little stuck in his imagination.

“Here’s your coffee,” said the barista, reaching over the cookie display with a to-go cup in her hand. “He seems nice, too.”

Slowly, Dan turned to face the barista, and reached up to take his drink. Now that Phil was gone, allowing for all of Dan’s neural functions to operate properly - and had been gone for a moment or two, allowing said neural functions to get themselves back online - he felt a bit giddy, as if his stomach was full of bubbles.

“He is,” said Dan, holding his coffee in both hands, gaze returning to the door. “He really is.”

* * *

  


  


  


  


  


  


  


* * *

It was in the nature of Dan’s crushes to be so all-consuming that, when suffering from one, he had an even harder time than usual paying attention to the everyday uni tasks such as taking notes or accomplishing homework on time. The one class that he did manage to stay on top of, however, was his intermediate visual arts, although it would be wise to note that the only reason he turned in all of his paintings on time was because it was surprisingly easy to daydream about Phil the Pretty Starbucks Man when lifting brush from paint to paper and back again.

However, Dan had physical limitations, however stupidly limiting they might be, and after a week of nothing but painting in every second of his free time, he found himself sprawled face-up on an old sheet spread across his floor to protect it from his sleep-deprived bouts of painting inspiration. His eyes were unfocused, and he was slowly rotating his wrists in alternating directions in a failing attempt to alleviate the ache in them that he’d only been encouraging for the past seven days.

He had run into Phil a couple times between last Thursday and today, a Wednesday - which, in fact, was nearing its end as he lay there on his floor - but they hadn’t exchanged anything more than a smile or a perfunctory “Hey, how are you?” (usually on Phil’s part, since Dan still found himself pathetically tongue-tied during the first three to five seconds of every one of their encounters). It was a slow, uncertain process, but as Dan lay there, staring up at his dusty ceiling with his arms stuck straight up in the air in front of him, it dawned on him that peeking through Starbucks doors before he opened them and hoping for the best really wasn’t going to get him anywhere.

Midterms were approaching with a vengeance, and his big body-painting project was due at 11:59pm this upcoming Sunday. In typical Dan fashion, he had yet to even come up with a concept for it, let alone find someone to ask to be his model.

His professor had given them all remarkably free rein for this particular assignment. The only guidelines provided had been a combination of their preferred medium and the human body, extra points for originality and clear expression of emotion. Dan switched the direction that he was rotating his wrists and thought.

He’d already decided on painting, that much was clear. In his short time on earth, Dan had thrown enough fits at the trials and tribulations of graphite blending and ruined enough ink-centric creations with spillage to know that painting was the only thing he’d be able to stand - especially when in conjunction with the human body.

It was easy enough, too, to come up with concepts to toy with. He cracked his knuckles and tossed words around in his head - animality, musicality, youthfulness. The fear - or acceptance - of growing old. The act of falling in love. The act of falling out of it.

In a normal setting, the near-deadline panic would be setting in just about now, but Dan had been sleep-deprived for the last month at least and his bedside clock was blinking 12:02, the second minute of witching hour, and honestly what were physical limitations when he could put off all his real-life responsibilities and _create_?

He ended up falling asleep on the floor around 4am, and was rudely awoken at 7:15 on Thursday morning by his phone’s alarm going off somewhere deep beneath his bed. It took him a solid minute to urge himself up off the floor to hunt it down, and five more to actually find it and shut it off. Of course, by the time he’d silenced it, he was wide a-fucking-wake, and felt disgusting from spending most of the night on the floor. This led to a pissed-off, extremely hot shower, and by that time, it was well past time for him to leave for his first class.

The cold air outside somehow shocked yet another level of alertness into him, and he buried his chin in his coat collar and made his grumpy way to biology. Today was the kind of day that warranted bluffing his way through classes by scrolling through Twitter under the table, and taking notes from the online .pdf of the lecture topic later.

Somehow he made it through all but one of his classes, and found himself opening his text conversation with Louise on the way to his final lecture of the day. He didn’t really have a reason, but messaged her anyway, and got an almost immediate response.

  


Dan wrinkled his nose affectionately and slipped his phone back into his pocket as he pushed through the doors of his final lecture hall. Louise’s idiotic tidbits of not-quite-advice were sometimes the only things that kept him sane, and he wouldn’t trade her for the world.

This attitude - although it held firm from the beginning his final lecture up until they were quite literally waiting in line at Starbucks, trying not to giggle _too_ disruptively at Dan’s almost-faceplant as he’d tripped while entering the building - disappeared almost instantaneously when the bell above the door tinkled and none other than Pretty Phil strolled in like nobody’s business.

The second the two of them registered who’d just come in and what was happening, both of Louise’s hands came up to clutch, vice-like, at Dan’s upper arm. She yanked him violently down to whisper in his ear. “Is that - ” she hissed, to which Dan replied with a tight-lipped nod and an extremely ineffective attempt to pry her off of him.

Phil had his eyes downcast, fixed on his phone, but the second he’d fallen into line behind them and glanced up, a tiny “Oh!” left his lips. He paused, glancing them up and down, and added a gentle, slightly bemused “Hi.”

“Hi,” said Dan breathlessly, still trying very carefully to unlock Louise’s grip on his arm. All at once, she seemed to register his efforts, and let him go, simultaneously taking two large steps away from him and drastically increasing the gap between their bodies.

Phil’s eyes followed her, and stuck. “Wait. Louise? Louise from maths?”

Dan’s stomach dropped to the soles of his feet. He glared at Louise out of the corner of his eye.

“Hi,” she squeaked, decidedly avoiding his eyes. “You’re Phil. From maths. I remember you.”

“I remember you too!” Phil said, tone slowly shifting from confused to cheerful. “Fancy seeing you here, with - ”

“Dan,” replied Louise, finally meeting Dan’s eyes. She looked mildly frightened. Dan raised an impassioned eyebrow at her. She looked back at Phil, and added, “My friend, Dan.”

Phil turned and met Dan’s eyes, bright-eyed expression softening into something a bit more familiar, and Dan’s cognitive functions sparked and short-circuited briefly. “Dan the painter,” he said. Dan’s stomach abruptly shot back up from his feet into its regular position and did a backflip.

“That’s me,” he tried to say, only his voice kind of disappeared halfway through so he had to clear his throat and try again. The only good thing about this situation was that Phil was still smiling at him.

“I didn’t know you two knew each other,” he said, glancing at Louise again.

Dan cleared his throat loudly. “I could say the same for you two,” he said, side-eyeing Louise with vehemence. She still wouldn’t really look at him.

“Wait,” said Phil, a touch of apprehension creeping into his voice. “Did I, like, make this awkward somehow?”

“No!” said Dan (a bit too loud) and Louise (like an apology). They locked eyes, and Dan could see in every centimetre of Louise’s face - pink cheeks, pursed lips, cocked eyebrow - that she was flustered, but also would never let him live it down if he didn’t at least ask for Phil’s number.

Their eye contact lasted for about .5 seconds before Louise looked abruptly down and pulled her phone out of her back pocket. “Whoops, I’m buzzing,” she said, and swiped upwards on what Dan was 100% sure was a blank screen. She lifted it to her ear and gave Dan a pointed look before turning and took an unnecessarily large number of steps away from them. 

Dan took a deep breath in and steeled himself to look back at Phil.

Phil, standing at the end of the line with the tips of two fingers hooked in his pocket, looked a bit lost. “Sorry for - interrupting, I suppose?” he said, and Dan’s stomach made a beeline right back down to his toes.

“No,” he said again, rocking his weight onto one foot and shoving his hands in his pockets. “Really, you didn’t interrupt anything.”

“As long as you’re sure,” replied Phil. The way he was watching Dan was a mixture of concerned and curious, and as the shock and awkwardness of their triple exchange slowly faded Dan was less and less able to handle it.

“It was just a surprise, it’s fine,” he said, shrugging in a failed attempt to regain any semblance of nonchalance. He coughed, and added “Didn’t know you two knew each other, though.”

“Yes, that’s what I said,” said Phil, smiling again and taking half a step closer. Dan’s heart took that as ample reason to kick up several notches. “I’m not really surprised, though. This is my last year here, and every year I find out more and more of my friends have the nerve to know each other behind my back.”

The words _last year here_ hit Dan like a sucker punch, but he ignored the empty feeling and forced a laugh anyway. That comment had unseated him, though, and he pulled a blank trying to think of any kind of response.

“How long have you been coming here?” asked Phil, in the split second before the silence got awkward, and Dan silently gave thanks to whatever deity gifted Phil with social skills.

“This is just my first year,” he replied, glancing over his shoulder and taking a couple steps backwards to keep up with the line. “I took a gap year, though.”

Phil grinned, laughed. “That’s probably the way to do it. I came straight here after secondary school.”

“So dedicated,” said Dan, raising his eyebrows.

Phil scrunched his nose at him. “No, just bored. I won’t be missing all these exams though.”

“Yeah, Jesus,” Dan agreed. “My visual arts midterm is a truckload and a half.”

“Is it painting, though?” asked Phil, raising an eyebrow and smirking.

Dan rolled his eyes. “Shut up. It is, which makes it like five percent less awful.”

“Aw, really? I’d have thought at least six percent,” said Phil, looking entirely too coy for anyone who actually made comments of that caliber.

Dan gave him an incredulous look. “You’re a handful, aren’t you?”

Phil winked. Dan coughed pointedly and looked away, his face on fire.

“No, really, I’m very nice,” said Phil, following him and somehow ending up even closer than before. “I don’t always make awful innuendos, I promise.”

“I’m sure,” said Dan, raising his eyebrows. Phil hunched his shoulders up in response and gave Dan this soft little kind of smile that made Dan feel like his insides had disappeared. He very firmly told himself not to look over in the direction that Louise had left. He was positive she was watching them both from the corner of the room like some sort of ridiculous eagle-eyed match-making fairy godmother.

“What kind of midterm is it, though?” asked Phil, smile fading a little and making way for an inquisitive quirk of his mouth. “I haven’t taken a visual arts course in my life, I’ve no idea what goes on in there.”

“Body-painting, actually,” said Dan, stomach lurching. Could this conversation have gone more perfectly? “I’ve never done a real body-painting piece before, which is gonna be interesting.”

“Do you have a model yet? I imagine that affects the end result quite a lot,” said Phil, looking genuinely interested.

 _I’d let_ you _affect my end result_ , Dan thought, then mentally facepalmed at his supreme idiocy and said aloud “You’re right, but unfortunately I don’t. Yet.” He paused, heart thumping at an ungodly pace. “Actually - ”

“I can help who’s next,” said the barista, directly behind Dan, and then Louise bustled back into the picture with an order ready to distract her but the door swung open at that very moment and a horde of giggling females flooded in and the most Dan could do was catch the half-irked, half-apologetic look Phil shot him before he was tugged up to the counter to order and then hustled aside.

“Did you ask him?” hissed Louise as soon as they’d been bundled over to the side to wait for their drinks.

“No, I didn’t get a chance,” Dan hissed right back, watching Phil through the freshly accumulated mass of people. Phil, halfway through his order, had apparently glanced up at the analog clock perched beside the menu, presumably realised he didn’t have enough time to wait for his drink, and was simultaneously apologizing to the barista and backing towards the door.

Once he’d reached it, he paused and turned to Dan and made a face that, while it was clearly meant to express apology, somehow managed to be the most unfairly adorable thing Dan had seen in the past week. He raised his hands, pointing at one wrist and mouthing _I’m gonna be late_ , and Dan couldn’t hold back a hopeless little huff of laughter at the blatant absence of a watch on either of his hands.

 _It’s okay,_ mouthed Dan across the room, and Phil smiled at him - crinkled eyes, messy hair - before leaving. If Dan was the type of person whose stomach twisted every time their current object of affection did something worthy of a reaction, his stomach would have twisted at that grin. 

Unfortunately, he was exactly that type of person, and his stomach was practically upside-down by the time the door swung shut.

“I left you two alone for ten entire minutes and you didn’t even ask him out,” grumbled Louise, grabbing Dan by the arm again and tugging him back toward the counter to pick up their drinks. “My god, Dan, I’m going to get old and gray waiting for you to make a move.”

* * *

Saturday evening, 9:56pm found a certain Dan Howell curled up under his duvet in bed, wearing nothing but a ratty old t-shirt and boxer briefs, re-watching High School Musical 2 for the umpteenth time, and utterly devoid of motivation. He’d spent the entire day taking full and desperate advantage of an unexpected burst of productivity, and the only piece of homework left unfinished that was due before the weekend was over happened to be his visual arts assignment. It was arguably the largest project he’d been given all semester, and he hadn’t even come up with a concept for it.

Even so, Troy Bolton worrying about college funds remained, as ever, far more interesting than any homework he’d ever been assigned, and Dan had almost completely buried any anxiety over not meeting the deadline - 29 hours was obviously plenty of time to both begin and complete something this big - when someone knocked on his door.

He jumped a bit too violently - it wasn’t a particularly loud knock, but it was sudden and present enough to make itself heard over his tinny laptop speakers - and hit the spacebar on his laptop, abruptly halting Gabriella’s heart-stirring rendition of “Gotta Go My Own Way”. He pushed himself warily to his feet and crept towards the door, shivering a bit. The air outside his duvet cave was unpleasantly chilly, due to the dorm building’s thermostat being an ancient, ferocious beast that Dan had never ventured near, and Dan somehow managing to do enough of his homework still curled up in bed that he hadn’t bothered to plug in his space heater that day.

His hand found the doorknob, and he paused, chewing on his lip hesitantly. There was honestly no-one he could think of who had ever visited his dorm room unannounced. Louise always made plans beforehand, and he wasn’t doing any group projects at the moment, thank God.

After a couple more seconds of deliberation, he made the executive decision that whoever had made him get out of bed at the ungodly hour of 10pm on a Saturday was going to have to pay. He turned the handle, pulled the door open, and came face to face with none other than Phil from fucking Starbucks.

“Oh my god,” he said succinctly, and slammed the door shut again.

“Wait, what?” came a muffled voice from the other side of the door, as Dan backed away with his heart pounding like a trapped rabbit. Was this insanity? Was this what it felt like to be personally victimised by whatever higher power you chose to believe in?

“Hi! Nothing,” he called back, valiantly attempting and slightly less valiantly failing to keep his voice steady. He was shaking like a fucking leaf in the wind. “Absolutely nothing. Give me two seconds.”

“Take your time,” said Phil - the Phil standing right outside Dan’s dorm room, right outside of it, in the flesh, what the _fuck_ \- and Dan drew in a shaky breath before diving for a pair of pyjama trousers lying wrinkled across the foot of his bed. He tugged them on and cast around wildly for a shirt that didn’t look like someone extremely scissor-happy had taken a liking to it.

“How did you - ” Dan started, and then didn’t bother to finish as he wrestled his way out of his ratty old sleep shirt and into a slightly less ratty, only occasionally slept-in shirt.

“I heard you had a project that was due, and you needed a model,” said Phil, sounding amused (at least, from what Dan could hear through the door). Hyperventilating, Dan kicked a few piles of questionably clean clothes into the corner by his dresser and slammed his laptop shut.

“How the fuck did you find out where I live?” he called, running both hands through his hair and attempting to calm himself down. He couldn’t decide if the shock had him numb or panicking.

“Louise told me,” replied Phil, “she said - ”

Suddenly incensed, Dan stormed over to the door, wrenched it open mid-sentence, and immediately lost all anger and resolve. Phil was standing there, looking warm and bright and quietly entertained, wearing a yellow Adventure Time hoodie and a smile, and Dan was a fucking puddle on the floor. This was the highest form of injustice.

“Hi,” said Phil. Fucking hell.

“Hi,” Dan replied. “Jesus Christ.”

“Can I come in?” Phil asked, looking curiously over Dan’s shoulder. Dan was fucking powerless. He nodded helplessly and moved over, gesturing Phil inside.

Dan was largely hopeless with social interaction even when it was planned, and this was just about the farthest thing from planned that he’d ever been involved in. Pretty Phil the Starbucks Man was standing large as life in the middle of his decidedly below-average, currently freezing bedroom, and fucking Louise had put him there.

“Okay,” said Dan, crossing the room to sink down onto his bed. He ran his fingers through his hair and rubbed his face vigorously before managing to lift his gaze back to Phil. “What did Louise do?”

“Oh my god, was this not a collaborative thing? I thought she was just asking because you and I don’t really have a way of getting together except for Starbucks,” said Phil, tone somehow shifting seamlessly from confusion to realization to incredulousness to understanding.

“Jesus _fuck_ ,” Dan groaned, burying his face in his hands again. “No, it wasn’t collaborative at all. She knows I - and she just went ahead and - _god_ she can be a dick sometimes,” he finished eloquently, looking up again. 

“I had no idea,” Phil half-giggled, glancing around the room. “She said you had a big body-painting project and I told her I already knew, and she asked if you’d asked me to model yet and when I said no she told me to just show up tonight. She’s the reason I know where you live. It’s not too far from my building, actually.”

“Fantastic,” mumbled Dan, propping his chin in his hands and looking at Phil. His head was swimming a bit. “Fucking wonderful.” The shock was slowly fading, and the realization that Phil was in his room and fully willing to let Dan to paint his fucking _body_ was setting in.

“I can - do you want me to leave?” asked Phil suddenly, looking at Dan with his brow furrowed in worry. “I probably scared the hell out of you, I’m sorry.”

“No!” Dan responded, shooting to his feet. “No, it’s just - I do need a model, this is due tomorrow at midnight and I really do need a model and it’s just - convenient,” he finished weakly, tossing a vague gesticulation in Phil’s direction and trying to wrap his head around what was going on.

“Okay,” said Phil, and this time his voice was soft and close and Dan’s mind rushed straight to warmth and breath and slow hands. He mentally slapped himself across the face and rubbed his eyes again, forcing himself to get it together. Now was _really_ not the time.

A little voice in the back of his head piped up an annoying, suggestive little _Not_ yet, _at least_ , but Dan squashed it with a vengeance and looking around his room. This was going to take a whole lot of on-the-spot choreography.

“Do you have a concept figured out yet?” asked Phil, still all soft and close and quiet and Dan forced himself not to get distracted. He had one night and one day left to get this done. He couldn’t fall apart now.

“Sunrise,” he blurted out, the very thing he was dreading. It was incredibly different to all of the concepts he’d been playing with before now; it was tangible, a phenomenon, rather than an emotion that he could take and process and express however he wanted.

Phil didn’t know a thing about the spontaneity of that statement, though, and was already nodding matter-of-factly and saying “So how are we going to do this?” and Dan couldn’t back out now.

“Um. Do you want to sit down?” he offered, gesturing towards his desk chair, and Phil gave him a bit of a smile and sat, spinning it around so he could still watch Dan.

“Your call, Dan,” he said, and Dan ignored the way his heartbeat skipped at the sound of his name in Phil’s voice.

“Okay,” he said, half a response and half to himself. His body paints were in the closet, he knew that much, but he needed a set-up, a place to actually take a picture and have it look good. His mind was racing, running through all his options; on the floor, in a chair, in his - Phil in his bed, okay, this was fine. Everything was fine.

His aunt, a photographer by hobby, had given him an old, very second-hand but still high-quality camera a few years back, and although Dan hadn’t used it for months now, he would bet a small sum of money that it was still buried in his closet under all his old nostalgic things from his family house. He crossed the room and pulled his closet open, grimacing at the dust that blossomed out into the room as the door scraped against the floor. There were his body paints on the shelf at eye level, the red bottle the only one previously opened, and there on the floor under three more layers of shelves was his camera bag.

“Need a hand?” asked Phil, and Dan jumped and looked over his shoulder. Phil was relaxed against the back of his desk chair but still watching him intently, both hands buried in his kangaroo pocket and hood flipped up over his head.

“No, I’m good,” replied Dan, and then “shit, it’s really cold in here, isn’t it?”

Phil shrugged, sitting forward, but Dan was already abandoning the closet in favor of dashing over to plug in his space heater and flip it to the highest setting. It crackled to life, filling the room with the smell of burnt dust, and Dan winced and cast an apologetic look over at Phil before dashing back over to the closet and dragging out one of his painting sheets.

Within the next five minutes, he’d frantically cleared everything but his fitted sheet off of his bed and tossed the painting sheet - old, king-sized, white but yellowing from age - over the whole thing. His last project, the ocean painting he’d been beating his wrists to death over last Wednesday night (the one embarrassingly reminiscent of Phil’s eyes), was still drying flat on the floor. He picked it up and propped it against the wall, and turned back to real-life Phil, who was still looking at him with those goddamn ocean eyes.

 _Why are you so beautiful_ , thought Dan, although what came out of his mouth was more like “I’m gonna sketch out a quick design, okay?”

“Okay,” Phil smiled, settling back into Dan’s desk chair again. Dan took a deep breath. He wasn’t allowed to have a conniption at 10:19 on a Saturday night. He was going to survive long enough to see Phil without a shirt on. He _was_.

His sketchpad was on his desk, beside a heap of textbooks, and he paused before coming closer to it. Phil spun the desk chair back around and scooted to the side, and Dan gave him a hesitant smile and pushed his schoolbooks aside so he had enough room to open his sketchpad to a blank page. He didn’t have any clear memory of drawing anything incriminating, but he still took care not to let Phil see any of his previous drawings. He wouldn’t put it past himself to have some kind of deeply mortifying sketch hidden somewhere in the used two-thirds of his current sketchpad.

It took him about eleven seconds to sketch a basic human figure, although he had to restrain himself from glancing over at Phil and mirroring the broadness of his shoulders, the way shadows collected beneath his lower lip and in the hollow of his throat. His mind and the pit of his stomach were all for going full-speed down that route, but he tugged himself back and turned instead to a basic set of ancient watercolour markers that he kept in a dusty jar at the very back of his desk.

He pulled out a few pale shades of yellow and lilac and blue and tossed a bit of the yellow on his sketch’s lower stomach, and then paused. The sight of the colour on the shape of a human body suddenly drove home the reality of what he was about to do, and he had to take a breath - shaky, determined - before picking out a couple more colours and really beginning.

Five minutes later he had a mildly acceptable sunrise colour scheme laid out on his sketch’s body. He glanced from his drawing to the body paints still in the closet, and swore quietly, crossing the room to pull them out and set them haphazardly on the floor. His eyes gravitated towards the yellows, the pinks and oranges, skipping over the greens and reds and landing instead on lilac and blue, the black and white. The mixed shades. The potential grey.

He moved back to the desk, glancing from his drawing to the paints on the floor and back again. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he could consciously feel himself sinking into the mindset that he always ended up in while he was painting, a low instinctual let-your-hands-do-the-work kind of being. The kind where if you thought about it, it would go away. It was an involuntary shift, the way he went from one way to the other, but he’d only just taken half a step back over to the body paints to uncap a few and test the colours out on his arm when Phil fidgeted and made a tiny, content kind of sound beside him. His proximity hit Dan like a brick, jolting him out of his painting mindset and back into real life. He coughed slightly and turned to make eye contact, steadfastly ignoring the familiar swooping sensation in his stomach.

“Okay,” he said, breathlessly, and ran his hands through his hair yet again. “Can you - I think you should, you know - ”

“Strip?” asked Phil, waggling his eyebrows and toeing off his shoes.

“Oh my god,” said Dan. He laughed, short and bright, and wow that’s what he should’ve done a long time ago, released the tension and awkwardness filling his body and therefore the space around him. “No need to make it a show, you weirdo.”

Phil giggled, eyes crinkling and fingers coming up to cover his mouth, and Dan resisted the urge to bury his face in his hands. He wanted to _hold_ those hands.

“I’ll make it into a show if I please, thank you very much,” Phil retorted, but stood up, moving closer to the bed with his back turned to Dan, and took his sweatshirt and undershirt off without any unnecessary flourishes. Dan sucked in a sharp breath at the sight of his bare shoulders. Objectively, they were perfectly ordinary shoulders, but those were Phil’s shoulders and right now Phil was anything but ordinary.

“Where do you want me?” Phil asked, tossing the words back over his shoulder as soon as he’d emerged from both his shirts. Dan tried to speak and failed.

“Bed,” he choked out, after clearing his throat several times. “Uh, pants on.”

Phil turned around and grinned at him, undoing his fly before sitting down and wrestling his jeans off. “On my back?” he asked, and Dan gulped and nodded.

Phil pushed himself back and laid down, and Dan tried very hard not to stare too long at the contrast between pale skin and dark gray boxer briefs, the way that shadows gathered not only below his lip and at his throat, but across his body: where his collarbones and hipbones made dips in his skin, in his armpits and the hollows of his elbows and knees and the center of his chest, down the cleft in his ribcage. All the places where he was most vulnerable, where skin was the softest.

Dan adamantly shoved the idea of soft skin and vulnerability out of his head and coughed before grabbing his painting supply box from the floor, where it had been sitting beside his ocean painting. He tugged out a stack of old yogurt lids, most of them messy with dry paint but a few still miraculously clean, and set them on the floor before grabbing a handful of paintbrushes and a sponge. He dropped them on the floor beside the side of his bed and stood up, surveying his canvas.

Phil was watching him, eyes bright and curious, hands clasped serenely over his stomach and legs crossed at the ankle. Dan reached out, fingers hesitant, and made contact with his shin, almost startling at the warmth of Phil’s skin in contrast to his freezing fingers.

“Uncross your legs?” he said, almost like question, and Phil obeyed without question. “Hands too,” added Dan, and Phil rolled his eyes in mock-exasperation and complied.

“Don’t sass me,” muttered Dan, and Phil let out a breathy little laugh and nudged Dan’s knee with the back of his hand. The moment of contact was so brief that it would have slipped past without really being registered, if it hadn’t sent tingles racing up Dan’s spine. 

“I’ll wait til you’re done covering me in paint before I sass you,” said Phil, smiling, and Dan really couldn’t do anything but hide a smile back with both hands.

“Too late,” he said through his palms, and Phil giggled and shook his head.

“Get going, slowpoke,” he said. Dan scoffed sarcastically and dropped to his knees, sitting back on his heels to grab a sponge, a yogurt lid, and the white paint.

The second cold paint touched warm skin, Phil gasped sharply, just barely flinching away. Dan’s stomach tightened, twisting pleasantly at that reaction. He glanced up at Phil’s face - eyes closed now, and lips slightly parted - and tried to steady his breathing.

“You gonna be okay?” he asked. Phil pressed his lips together and nodded wordlessly.

“Of course. It’s just paint, I’ll get used to it.”

“As long as you’re sure,” Dan said, and pressed a second white splotch to Phil’s lower stomach. He still got a reaction, but it was less of one this time, which helped considerably to stabilize Dan’s mental state, and he only had to pause for a moment before continuing.

It wasn’t long before the steady rhythm of sponge first to paint and then to skin and back again lulled Dan’s brain back into that gentle, mindless way of existing. He stopped thinking, stopped registering the sound of Phil’s breathing, just moved with the barely-there curve of his belly and the gentle, visible rhythm of his breath and the way the colour spread: opaque up the center of his body, the dip of his ribcage, across his shoulders and his chest. It faded as it spread outwards, misty edges like morning clouds, like the billow of warm breath in cold air.

Dan let the colour decide where it wanted to go, white fading into yellow into pink and gold. He spread clouds over Phil’s collarbones, let pale blue find a home in his solar plexus and the dip of his ribcage.

Time always passed like liquid gold when he was painting, slow and intangible, and so Dan had no idea what time it was by the time Phil made an abnormal movement and coughed. The sound and motion tugged Dan up from the depths of his reverie like a life preserver tugging a drowning sailor up to the surface from the edge of the deep. He had to blink a couple times to bring himself fully back, and by the time he could focus on Phil’s face, Phil was trying to sit up.

“Fuck - stop!” Dan yelped, hand darting to Phil’s bicep and shoving him back down. Breath whooshed out of him, and he coughed again, relaxing under Dan’s hand.

“Sorry,” he said, clearing his throat. “Thirsty.”

“Fuck,” repeated Dan, pushing himself to his feet and wincing when both his knees cracked. “It’s okay, I overreacted. I’ll get it for you.”

“Thanks,” Phil murmured, half-whispering. The room was warm now, and the space heater’s roar had subsided into a low, occasionally crackly hum in the background. It was soothing, and although Dan was still disoriented as he rinsed and filled an old coffee mug in his bathroom sink, he felt far more grounded than he had when Phil had appeared - adamantly present and completely prepared to take off all his clothes.

His bedside clock was blinking 12:39pm as he came back to Phil, which only served to disorient him further, but he did his best to ignore it and instead settled down on his knees again, setting the mug on the ground and deliberating. After a moment, he reached out, quietly asking “Can I - ”

“Sure,” Phil murmured, lifting his head so Dan could slide his hand under it, lifting him just the tiniest bit, fingers buried in his hair. Dan’s breathing picked up involuntarily as he lifted the mug to Phil’s lips, only letting him take a couple sips before pulling it away.

“I don’t want you needing to use the loo before I’m done,” explained Dan, cracking his neck and reaching for a flat brush. Phil grinned a bit at that before laying back and closing his eyes again, relaxed. 12:42pm.

For the next six hours, Dan painted and Phil laid there, compliant, slipping in and out of a half-sleep. By the time the clock was blinking 6:45am, Dan was rinsing his final paintbrush - coincidentally, in Phil’s old drinking water - and sitting back on his heels, finally registering the ache in his back.

However much physical pain he was in, pale dawn light was just beginning to stream, watery, in through his window, bathing the colours dappled over Phil’s body in a new kind of illumination. He clasped his hands behind his back, cracking both his shoulders and taking in his first deep, purposeful breath of the day. He really couldn’t tear his eyes off the way the gentle movement of Phil’s breath brought the colours to life.

Phil’s lower stomach was blocked out solid white like the centre of a sunrise, fanning out into a semicircle of rays and cut in half by the dark waistband of his pants. Extending up his torso, the white feathered into yellow, pale and foggy and edged with rose-gold clouds. His ribs were streaked with pale blue and his shoulders winged with feathery white clouds, underlaid with gold and pink from the sunrise below them.

The tops of his thighs matched the pastel blue of his ribs, but there was a touch of lilac there too, clouds softening the cool colours with round edges and pale shadows. Dan had tried for the first hour or two of painting to keep his pants clean, but they’d ended up with flecks of paint edging in on the hems anyway, white and blue and yellow against dark gray and black.

The part that Dan’s eyes kept returning to, though, were the stars. He’d mixed himself some kind of silver, with white and black and a tiny pot of glitter he’d found in the bottom of his supply box, and dotted them everywhere they could hide from the sunlight; on his shoulders, across his nose like freckles, above his knees. Tiny shining flecks of light, normally hidden constellations across normally hidden skin.

Dan wanted to _touch_.

“Phil,” he murmured, his voice hoarse and raspy from disuse, but still there. He reached out and brushed paint-streaked fingers against Phil’s cheek, and his eyes opened, incredibly blue in the morning light.

“I’m awake,” he murmured, and then added “sort of.”

“Perfect,” Dan smiled, and bent down to hook two fingers behind Phil’s knee. “Bend this for me?”

Phil’s body was soft and warm and compliant, and Dan bent his knees up, gripped his waist just for a second to arch his back, buried Phil’s hands in his own hair and resisted the temptation to do the same. By the time he’d figured out his camera and adjusted everything to his liking, the pale, watery light had warmed into gold, and Dan toed his yogurt lids to the side and framed the photograph so he could see the sky outside the window as well as the sky shining on Phil’s skin.

He took a few, and then shifted angles and took a few more, and then he lowered the camera and just looked. Phil was breathing steadily, eyes closed and covered by his fringe, the lines of his body long and soft and caught in the sunlight as if he were on the verge of waking up, or the verge of climax. Dan, with his paint-stained fingers and tired eyes, couldn’t do a thing except _look_.

It was probably just a bit too long before Dan finally sighed and said “You can sit up. I have what I need.”

Phil slipped his hands out of his hair, stretching his arms up above his head before he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat up. Dan sank down beside him, rolling his neck and thinking vaguely that if he had the money, he should probably go see a chiropractor. Being hunched over for hours on end on an almost-daily basis probably wasn’t the best for his physical well-being.

“Can I see the pictures?” Phil murmured, leaning in close, and the nearness of him made Dan’s stomach twist. Heart racing, he tilted the camera so the screen was visible to both of them, and thumbed through the photos. Phil hummed appreciatively at the first one, and didn’t look away.

“It looks really good,” he said once Dan had scrolled through all of the pictures he’d taken. “Like, amazing.”

“I try,” said Dan, grinning to himself and rubbing his face in an attempt to wake himself up a little. Now that the project was done, the exhaustion was kicking in, and although Phil’s closeness was most certainly a catalyst Dan had just spent an entire night with his hands all over Phil’s body. The novelty had worn off, just a little.

A moment went by, and another, and suddenly Dan was aware of the tension, curling gently but inexorably in the pit of his stomach and in the air around them. All at once, he found himself completely unable to meet Phil’s eyes.

“Dan,” said Phil, gently, like a question - like a prayer. His hand found Dan’s wrist, warm and gentle, and he tugged. Dan’s chin followed the movement without him saying it was allowed to. The next moment, Phil was ducking forward and pressing their lips together, and the world slowed down.

It took Dan a bit too long to respond, but once he did he felt a hum against his lips and then mouths were open and teeth were grazing his lower lip and he made a tiny, involuntary noise, leaning closer. Phil was sturdy against him, pressing back, until something slipped and they went tumbling back onto Dan’s bed, onto the painting sheet, Phil still covered in colour and Dan swinging a leg over his hips, desperately seeking his mouth back out.

His hands stuttered on Phil’s torso before he splayed them out, fingertips nudging through the paint and finding warm skin beneath. He murmured something that wasn’t words, breath hitching as his tongue slipped against Phil’s and slow hands found their way under his shirt, pressing into the small of his back. Dan’s stomach was full of heat now, the tension had snapped and now it was nothing but fizzing sensation and heavy want.

“Dan,” said Phil, breathless against the corner of Dan’s mouth, and then again; “ _Dan_.” His hands slipped around to Dan’s stomach, toying with the waist of his pyjama bottoms.

“Please - ” Dan panted, rocking his hips forward, and he could feel Phil against his arse, hard and straining. Phil let out a half-aborted moan and rolled them over, pressing a kiss up against the bottom of Dan’s chin before he slipped down, breath dangerously close to Dan’s belly button.

“You’re gonna,” panted Dan, trying to keep himself from bucking his hips up into Phil’s touch, “get paint on my sheets.”

“I’ll pay for your trip to the laundromat,” Phil sighed against the baby hairs trailing down into Dan’s waistband, dipping his tongue below the elastic. Dan giggled and sighed simultaneously, giddy and disoriented in the best way. His hands found their way into Phil’s hair as warm fingers tugged his trousers and pants down at the same time. The cold air left him breathless, and then there was a mouth on him and he let out a throaty noise that he only managed to choke off a second too late. 

His hands flew out of Phil’s hair, coming up to cover his burning face. His self-control was wearing thin; it took every inch of energy left in his body to keep his hips on the bed.

“Shit,” he grunted as Phil’s tongue did something twisty and complicated and Dan’s stomach jerked. “Fuck, shit, you’re - hah, you’re good at - ”

“Why, thank you,” said Phil, low and rumbly like a cat’s purr, lips pressed right up against Dan’s skin, and Dan gasped and came about fifteen seconds after Phil wrapped his fingers around him.

He was panting as he slowly relaxed, melting into the mattress. The morning sunlight streaming in his window, bright and gold and awfully reminiscent of the work of art that had just gotten him off, only added another layer to his afterglow.

The bed creaked and dipped, and Phil flopped down beside him, breath unsteady and hand between his legs. Dan turned into him and pressed his lips against Phil’s shoulder, inhaling the smell of paint and sweat and skin, fingers slipping downward to touch, to feel.

His fingertips slipped below Phil’s waistband - Dan could hear Phil’s breath hitch, _god_ that was a sweet little sound - and curled around hot damp skin. He could feel Phil’s pulse against his palm, and started giggling, turning closer so he could bury his laughter in Phil’s shoulder.

“What?” Phil panted, voice breathy and weak. Dan’s laughter only got stronger.

“You really are a handful, wow,” he managed eventually, through his giggles. He tugged upwards as soon as he was done speaking, relishing the taut drag, and picked up a rhythm despite Phil’s stomach fluttering with laughter.

When Phil came, it was something more like artwork than anything Dan had ever created. He found himself tugging Phil close as soon as he’d come down, pressing his lips to nose and cheek and mouth, giggly and breathless and trembling.

Dan had seen a lot of things that left him dumbfounded, left him speechless and believing (for at least a little while) that there actually was something greater, something more fragile and precious than human imagination in the world. He had kissed girls and he had kissed boys and he had kissed people who were somewhere in between. He had tasted things like desperation, and desire, and gratitude and love on someone else’s tongue. He had touched skin and he had been touched in return, and he had wanted things he would never be able to have. He’d laughed and cried and almost been able to call something magical. He was a cynic at heart, and a skeptic, and he had searched through finger cramps and paint-stained knees for something like faith, something like magic, and never quite found it.

But the closest thing to magic that he’d ever witnessed, ever been a part of, was that very morning: the two of them, bathed in sunrise and sleep and bliss, and Phil from Starbucks, Phil the Sunshine Man, kissing him back.

**Author's Note:**

> I read and appreciate every single comment I get. However, chances are I won't reply to most of them, unless they pose a question that I can answer or something else that sparks my imagination (an idea brought on by my writing, a request for a new type of fic, etc). Regardless of this, if you enjoyed this story, you are more than welcome to leave your thoughts in a comment down below. I guarantee you I will see and treasure it, even if I don't reply <3 Thank you all so much for reading!


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